Infants and other incontinent individuals wear disposable absorbent articles such as diapers to receive and contain urine and other body exudates. Absorbent garments having fixed sides (e.g., training pants or pull-on diapers) have become popular for use on children able to walk and often who are toilet training. In order to contain body exudates as well as to fit a wide variety of body shapes and sizes, these pants must fit snugly about the waist and legs of the wearer without drooping, sagging or sliding down from its position on the torso as well as fitting larger wearers without causing irritation to the skin due to the product being too tight. Thus, the pant must have elastic extensibility in the waist and legs with the elastic features providing a high degree of stretch.
Many training pants and pull-on diapers use conventional elastic elements secured in an elastically contractible condition in the waist and leg openings. Typically, in order to insure full elastic fit about the leg and the waist such as is provided with durable undergarments, the leg openings and waist opening are encircled with elasticized bands of rubber or other materials positioned along the curve of the opening. These pants are typically characterized as "balloon style" pants because of the contraction caused by the elasticized bands in specific zones of the product while the remaining material tends to blouse. Examples of such training pants are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,171,239 to Igaue, et al. on Dec. 15, 1992 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,610,681 to Strohbeen, et al. on Sep. 9, 1986. Although these pants will allow fit of various waist and leg sizes due to the fact that the contractive elastic openings will expand to accommodate various size wearers, these products still fit a limited range of fit sizes because the elastic elements are in contraction and do not have a high degree of stretch. The narrow elastic bands used in the waist opening and the leg openings also tend to concentrate the "fitment" forces in a narrow zone of the wearer's body leading to increased incidence of skin marking of the wearer. Further, the sides and remainder of the products are typically not elastically extensible thereby reducing the fit.
In order to solve this deficiency in balloon-style pants, some manufacturers have positioned elastic strands across the entire front and back regions of the product. For example, WO 93/17648 published on Sep. 16, 1993, discloses a pant-type diaper in which the front and/or the rear parts are elastically contractible and the ends of the absorbent core are disposed in these regions. These additional elastic strands act to contract the entire front and back waist parts of the pant including the end areas of the absorbent core. This allows greater expansion of the product in the waist region but causes the absorbent core to be gathered and bunch at the waist opening. This gathering and bunching results in a higher risk of leakage at the waist since channels are created along the absorbent core that allows body exudates to wick or flow out of the waist. This gathering of the absorbent core also affects the appearance of the product in that the product does not appear as aesthetically pleasing as the balloon style pants.
Another type training pant is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,940,464 issued to Van Gompel, et al. on Jul. 10, 1990, wherein a pant-like garment is formed by attaching discrete stretchable members to the side edges of the main body of the garment. This stretchable member allows the article to fit variations in size as the stretchable member expands to meet the size of the wearer. However, the seaming of the main body with the stretchable members are a major problem in the product and in the manufacturing process. The seams must be made extremely strong and capable of handling great forces during application and use. A pant undergoes severe forces and stresses during use which may cause the side panels to break away or tear from the main body portion. Further, controlling these separate stretchable members severely complicates the manufacturing process and causes these pants to be more costly to the consumer. The seams to the main body portion also tend to concentrate the fitment forces at the top and bottom of the product resulting in increased seam tearing and poorer fit of the garment.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,246,433 issued to Hasse, Bridges & Miller on Sep. 21, 1993, discloses a pant having stretch laminate side panels as well as elastic waistbands and leg bands. The stretch laminates in the side panels provide stretch in the sides of the product to better fit the pant on the wearer. The stretch laminates are unitary with the rest of the pant to overcome the drawbacks associated with the pants having separate and discrete elastic panel members attached thereto while improving the fit over the conventional balloon-style pants. However, these pants suffer from the drawback that the side panels are not sufficiently stretchable to allow a wearer to easily pull the pant on by themselves. The stretch laminates disclosed therein provide a limited amount of stretch. Further, the materials used to form the stretch laminates can have problems with tearing or shredding during use resulting in the products being scrapped by the manufacturer.
Another drawback with all of these products is the breathability of the product. The panels of the pant are typically formed by films or foams which can preclude the breathability of such products. This lack of breathability may result in a hot stuffy product for the wearer.
It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to provide a disposable pull-on garment with a high degree of stretch such that the garment will conformably fit wearers in a broad range of sizes.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a disposable pull-on garment with breathable seams joining the front and back regions together.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a disposable pull-on garment with a high degree of breathability in at least the side panels, and more preferably in the waistband zones, to allow vapor transmission so that the garment is not hot and stuffy.